Letter 7: The years pass more quickly than I expected when I was young, and I find myself increasingly grateful for the...

To the most holy Lord Paul, bishop of Verdun, from his brother Desiderius of Cahors, greetings in Christ, The years pass more quickly than I expected when I was young, and I find myself increasingly grateful for the friendships that have sustained me through them — among which I count yours, though we have met only twice in person. I write partly to maintain the correspondence and partly because I want to share an experience from the past year that I think will interest you as a fellow bishop. I conducted a thorough visitation of all the parishes in my diocese this past summer — the first genuinely comprehensive one I had managed since taking office. What I found was better than I feared and worse than I hoped. The clergy are, for the most part, doing their work with genuine commitment; the pastoral care of the people is largely adequate; the record-keeping and administration are uneven but not catastrophically so. What struck me most, however, was not the administrative picture but the spiritual one. In parish after parish, I found communities of genuine faith — people who pray, who know their scripture better than I expected, who care for their neighbors, who bring their troubles to the church because they believe the church can help. In a generation that has known much violence and uncertainty, this is remarkable. I thought you would want to know. Your brother in the faith, Desiderius